Derby County – World Soccer Season Preview

For the last few years, we’ve been asked the write the Derby County piece for the World Soccer season preview special they release each year.

The format is that they send a generic set of questions to each club and you simply send in the answers. Here’s our submission for this years publication, which by the way is a brilliant sunbed read.

1. In a sentence, how would you describe last season?

Absolutely fantastic and thoroughly enjoyable, until the 90th minute of the play off final.

2. What are you expecting from this season?

Now we have retained all of our key midfielders (Bryson, Hughes, Hendrick), I think we can expect another full on promotion tilt, with the play offs the minimum target. The Rams are a Premiership club in every aspect aside from the one that matters. Hopefully this year is our time.

3. Who was your biggest hero last season?

The team generally was brilliant all season serving up lots of goals with a highly entertaining brand of champagne supernova football, most teams just couldn’t live with. For that reason I’m going for Steve McClaren, who’s appointment changed everything.

4. Who was your biggest villain?

Conor Sammon certainly became a bit of an object of ridicule for many; his style of play hopelessly out of kilter with the football McClaren introduced. However it has to be Bobby Zamora, simply for breaking the hearts of all Derby fans.

5. What was the best terrace song/chant last season?

The Andre Wisdom, “he parks where he wants” (in reference to a mega Sat NAV fail making Andre abandon his Porsche in 5 feet of mud) was a cracker. However “since I was young…” Has become our anthem. Since I was young, I followed the…DCFC, the team for me”.

6. Is there a young player should we look out for?

Hendrick and Hughes you know about and they have both signed long term deals. However I think this could be the year for Mason Bennett to properly break through to the first team. His style suits a wide berth in our 433 formation perfectly. If he gets his chance, he can take it.

7. Which game are you most looking forward to, and why?

The Forest game is always the one for us and another 5-0 thumping would be great. However it’s good to have Wolves back in the division and it’s always a good occasion when they visit Derby.

8. Are there any games you are dreading, and why?

One of the most galling things about losing the play off final was the prospect of another round of what I call the treadmill championship games. The usual mid table suspects of Ipswich, Watford, Birmingham etc coming with 10 men behind the ball are always hard work.